Thursday, June 16, 2011

From The Horses' Mouths

It takes a lot to make me jump in the air and click my callused heels, but Bastardette's blog from yesterday about the the things many adopters say and think, "Busted: Adoptive Parents Speak," definitely had me catching some air time. I say many adopters, but my personal experiences with those who adopt has ME saying MOST adopters. I read this one and let out with a loud "YES" which had one of my dogs barking, wondering where the intruder was.

Another mother and I were talking and we noted that people we knew before they decided to adopt were very different after that. They went through some kind of obsessive metamorphosis that didn't do a whole lot for their fairness and compassion factors. I know of one, whom I once thought of as the soul of tolerance, who began to utter disparaging remarks about "slutty, teenage whores." If she thought so little of the mother, why would she want that girl's child? And if the adopted child hears his/her natural mother spoken of in that way, how must it make that child feel about him/herself?

Here is one such quote from a blog entitled, 'Adoptive Parents Speak,' from which Bastardette culled the best bits for her excellent post.

"Holy Crap
The adoption option–

The baby’s mother– An immature irresponsible young women most likely from a Jerry Springer Show type of family. She will be extremly emotionally attached to her baby and is too immature to fully understand and cope with the boundaries of an open adoption relationship. Infant adoption is a catch 22. Mothers of good genetic stock aren’t screwed up enough to give thier newborn babies away to strangers…..If a mother is unfit enough to give away her baby she is unfortunatly not only unfit enough to parent but is also unfit where she shouldn’t be breeding and spreading her inferior genes. She is most likely a failure in school with a low IQ. I have read on adoption forums that if an adoptive couple checks off that they don’t want a baby from a birthmother who has smoked during her pregnancy that they will be on the waiting list for a long time….Birthmothers tend to come from families with drug abuse and alcholism. I have seen birthmother blogs and I have never seen an attractive birthmother. Most of them look like the trailer park white trash that they are. Ugly squirrely faces, buck teeth, obese etc. Birthmothers are deadbeat moms. Why would adoptive parents pay 30 grand for some loser’s baby?
(spelling left intact)"

This one was among the more offensive that I read and I have to thank Bastardette for the post and the link. The Industry and the adopters themselves have created a monster of a person with little thought for anyone but themselves and an avarice that allows them to discount the humanity and dignity of the mother of the child they covet. They are intent on keeping the stigma of the "slutty, unwed mother" alive and treat the children they so avidly desire as horses at a livestock sale. Let's see...check hoofs, teeth, back and whithers...OK, this one'll do, pardner.

Perhaps the only way they can live with themselves is to dehumanize both the product and the producer. Their derisive attitude towards the mother is tinged with the envy they must feel for her fertility. Sorry, but this is 2011 and no one can tell me that all these wannabe mommies went to their marriage bed with hymen intact. I have to ask, since along with delayed childbirth, STDs are the foremost common causes of infertility, just what right any of these women have to judge the mothers whose babies they covet so fiercely? What if everyone started saying that adopters do so because they spread their legs and got a case of the clap? That kind of stereotype is what is laid on Natural Mothers to this, supposedly, enlightened day.

We mothers, mostly in private support groups, have been sharing our experiences and disappointments with the people who adopted our children for years. We can't express that to our adult children because they are, for the most part, very defensive of their adopters and that's understandable. But when we reunite with a seriously damaged individual whose ideas about motherhood, family, and relationships is badly skewed, and whose personal life is in shambles, it is hard not to be angry at both the adopters and those social workers who promised us the moon, adopter-wise. Ward and June were unavailable so our kids got whatever was behind door number 2.

We Natural Mothers from the BSE/EMS were, for the most part, coerced into surrendering our parental rights and responsibilities. But NO ONE could make us surrender our motherhood, our right to eventually know our child and our concern and caring for that child. And that scares the fetid feces out of the adopters. Deep down, they know this. They know we are torn and grieving.

So they attack our morals, our values, our worth as human beings as a way to justify their greed. They find the few who fit their description and label the majority by the picture of that tiny minority. I still wonder why that woman quoted above would want the child of the women she describes. It boggles the logical mind.

I hope that every woman with an unplanned pregnancy that is considering surrender will read that blog. They need to know into what kind of environment they are sending their innocent babies. I hope that informative blog stays up and adopters and PAPs keep adding their venom and arrogance to it.

Then if anyone wonders where the potential beemommy got the idea to change her mind about surrender, we can say, "she got her information from the horses' mouths!"

12 comments:

Unknown said...

This is excellent, Robin. I had gone to that blog the other day and posted a link on a forum I am part of. The comments there were very interesting. I further linked BD's post, and the silence has been deafening. Aishlin had such a good idea, putting the quotes that have left us gasping for air in private, up there, in a public blog, visible to all! Good for her! and, good for you for this one! We know there will be repercussions from this as there always are for mothers but it is right and just that their vicious words be shown the light of day.

Stephanie said...

"Perhaps the only way they can live with themselves is to dehumanize both the product and the producer. Their derisive attitude towards the mother is tinged with the envy they must feel for her fertility..."

My sentiments EXACTLY; and the fact that the child they covet is of another woman. That tends to make them insanely jealous and possessive, from what I have learned~ (the hard way).

jimm said...

A number of the posts on the blog Bastardette quotes were taken from that great "All Things Adoption For All People" site, Adoption dot com. Strangely enough, responding honestly to these types of comments has gotten me banned from that site. Four times. They now have my ip addresses and won't tolerate any more aliases - adoptees are the least favored portion of the "triad" over there. Well, adoptees and first parents.

Their "well-balanced" approach reminds me of Fox News' "fair and balanced" approach.

Von said...

Too much here of an appalling nature to comment on.Right now Australian adoptees are facing a stiff challenge not to be beaten down by the criticisms,judgements and disbelief of those who don't want to hear our truth and our stories.That opposition comes from a place it might be least expected but is a huge indicator of the damage of forced adoption.

Unsigned Masterpiece said...

These AP/PAP comments are what we always suspected but hoped we were wrong.

We sit in silence because we don't want our kids to hear our criticisms as critical of them. Many of them have not had positive adoptive experiences.

Anonymous said...

Kitta here:

I began speaking out about adoption shortly after i lost my son in 1968. Not many of us were speaking about it then, but some were. I was in college and the civil rights movement gave us some courage.

i noticed that adoptive parents talked ugly about natural mothers....not surprising in those days...but i don't think it has changed much today because the adoptive parents want our children and we wanted our children and there really isn't any compromise there.

If we had been able to keep our children as we should have, the adoptive parents wouldn't be in the picture at all.

Elle said...

Hi, Robin. I'm a Swedish Korean adoptee. It's my first visit to your blog. I wonder if I might add your blog to Adoptee Resources on mine ?

Robin said...

Sure, Elle. I hope it will help.

Von said...

Sadly in our case it isn't the adopters who are doing the ugly talking.

Robin said...

Not sure what's going on in OZ, Von. I know that Dian Welfare and Lily Arthur and many other mothers down there helped tremendously in the past, prior to the NSW investigation. Different cultures call for different strategies and the culture is what affects the players.

etropic said...

If she thought so little of the mother, why would she want that girl's child?

I'll tell why..because that child is "innocent" and they(the PAP) is "saving a child" from a life of sin. (These EXACT WORDS have been uttered in my presence KNOWING I am a first mother.) These people believe that they can love these children enough to a point where biology is insignificant. Then when the child turns out to be less than perfect, all of a sudden, biology gets the blame, not the process of adoption...

Von said...

It's complicated Robin and yet so simple.Adoption never stands still, adoptees grow up, tell their stories and if they are disbelieved or discredited walk a different path.
Adoptees turn out to be human like everyone else, those who can't accept the loss and trauma that made us human need to walk away and leave us to fix what needs fixing.